With the prevalence of computer technology, producers of printed matter often create electronic versions of their printed matter before sending out to print (such as newspapers, magazines and books). The electronic versions provide many advantages such as ease in making changes, being readily printable and the ability to be quickly and efficiently distributed to a large number of people over a wide geographic region (particularly via the Internet). However, it takes a long time to deliver and download since the files are normally very big.
Usually the publishers or designers will use desktop publishing software such as Quarkxpress®, CorelDraw® to create their printed matter and saving them in digital file format like PDF, TIFF and JPEG before sending out for print. The file size is big and likewise the dedicated viewer is required for viewing the file, thus making it not ideal for easy browsing and distribution over the web or other media.
In the late 1990s, Internet news portals blossomed in the World Wide Web due to the investment craze in the financial market. They utilized little software to process their images and text information before porting to a content-management system like Interwoven®, Vignette® to create templates for their news articles. This has proven to be both cost and labor intensive and most of them are not profitable. Many newspaper publishers also jump into this way of publishing their news fearing the Internet news portals will grab away their business if they did not do the same thing. Many lost money and find it more and more difficult to operate nowadays. Many are also not publishing in the web due to the above problems, especially magazine publishers. Therefore, it is the intention of this invention to address these problems where publishers are able to create an electronic version of their printed matter after their usual design process by converting them to the web in very small files which are easy for distribution and browsing.
Electronic versions of the printed matter at the web often have a different appearance to that of their printed matter counterparts. The reason that the electronic versions have a different appearance is that information contained therein can be difficult to discern if presented with the same appearance as the printed version. For example, the text may be too small to read. Consequently, the appearance of the electronic version for the web needs to be adapted in a manner that permits the information to be readily discerned when viewed. Unfortunately, changing the appearance of the electronic versions at the web can lead to a ‘double identity’ problem. Essentially, this means that viewers of the printed matter and the electronic version thereof may be given the impression that both publications are from different sources, or are different publications altogether.
Furthermore, there is a dire need to provide fast download of those images and textual information via a more superior compression format than the current commonly used web image formats like JPEG and GIF, to create an adaptive and friendly browsing environment for readers to read those electronic version of the printed matter like newspapers and magazines. Another intention of this invention to create a compelling compression system and algorithms for multi-channel distribution (Internet, wireless, mobile phone, PDA, satellite etc) of multi-format to enhance the distribution of content worldwide.
Beside the creation of such printed matters to electronic version, there is no business process interactivity built-in with the articles, images or advertisements like web-interactive feedbacks, e-coupons, special offers, e-commerce capabilities etc while browsing and viewing those articles and advertisements. At the moment they are just plain texts and images. It is another intention of this invention to create compelling business templates while transforming the electronic version of the printed matters to compressed format in one go.
In addition, due to vast number of newspapers available worldwide in different languages, there are rising needs to read the news of the other country in different languages. As the world is getting smaller and country to country is getting more connected, to read other language newspaper becomes necessary and sometimes critical for business success.
It is the intention of this invention to have an interactive multi-lingual dictionary whereby understanding the content of newspapers in other languages becomes easy. Furthermore, it can increase foreign language literacy and learning of languages through newspapers, both through text and voice in simultaneous digital translation.
Understanding the content of newspapers in foreign languages not only gives first hand knowledge of the happenings of the countries, but also the culture and customs. This makes the world a more peaceful place to live for different races and bridges the language barrier that many readers have concerning foreign language newspapers.
Furthermore, due to the short time span where daily newspaper content is prepared, any foreign language translation needs to be done swiftly in order to beat the time for publishing and delivery. Therefore, instead of getting the foreign language version of newspapers being translated daily electronically, which is time consuming, the digital content can be kept untouched with the present invention where the invention's intelligence and interactive module will facilitate the understanding of the newspaper in other foreign languages through digital simultaneous translation of word by word in text and/or voice.
The invention is intuitive and easily used by readers who are able to understand the content of these foreign newspapers. The present invention is able to present the articles content in digital text, and just by selecting or highlighting the word(s) or paragraph(s) in the article window and by right-clicking on the mouse, a window will open up that will show the actual word(s) on the left and the corresponding translated word(s) on the right.
In addition, the invention provides alternative meanings of each word and presents them correspondingly on the right of each word. It is more accurate for a human being to gauge the right meanings for the word(s) in context rather than machine artificial intelligence translation of the sentence.
The software allows text articles and translated words to be read to them by clicking and accelerates the understanding and learning of foreign languages, and is especially useful for those who are visually impaired or cannot read or understand the text.